James Osborne was on one of these helicopters. In fact he was on the second helicopter as the pilot call “feet dry.” This bit of military lingo indicated that the helo had transitioned from flying over water to land. Their target was on a cliff and posed a threat to the beaches of Gdynia.
Protecting the beaches was essential to the coming invasion. Gdynia’s sandy, slopping beaches were perfect for the type of landing craft that most of the invasion force rode on to shore.
The landing craft to be used in Operation Triple Cross had been transported all the way from the Pacific. They had been built, but never used, for the invasion of Japan. Now the Higgins boats would fulfill their destiny by debarking tens of thousands of men and tons of material onto the shores of Poland.
Jimmy was looking down at those beaches. They reminded him of Jaws Beach in Nassau except for one big difference. He was a thousand feet up and hanging on like his life depended upon it, as of course it did.
The novelty of standing in an open doorway of a helicopter had not worn off or become second nature. Being bounced around by thermals and catching glimpses of the helo blades traveling at incredible speed just above your head had not become mundane or normal. Combined with the adrenaline rush of combat, Osborne was beginning to feel like he was going to puke.
In World War Two Jimmy and his men had been stationed as liaisons to the British in Nassau, Bahamas for over a year. Most of their dads were no longer in a position to pull strings. Some of their dads were voted out of office and some had died in the fighting of the last war. For whatever reason the sons had lost their golden ticket and were now heading into harm’s way.
Many vets and other rookies knew that the members of this unit had been dodging combat. The result was a lot of bad blood between the various groups. Jimmy’s company had gotten all the shit jobs and now they were out front without a net.
As a newly minted Lieutenant, Jimmy had to hold it together. His men were watching him both out of curiosity and out of desperation. His whole squad was made up of Midwestern draftees who thought they were going to wait out this war. These guys had done exactly that during the last war by sitting on their keisters and letting some other poor schmucks fight and die. Their unit was full of rich boys and politician’s sons who fully expected to be pulling duty in the Bahamas like the last war.
Suddenly the lead helicopter took a hit from a rare burst of flak and disintegrated before Jimmy’s eyes. Ryan, Williams, Kasen and Biltmore were on that bird. Now they were no more. Holy shit this is getting serious, Jimmy thought. A former senator’s son and a multi-millionaire’s boy were just obliterated like any other Joe would have been. What the hell good was being rich if you couldn’t even get out of this shit! What a waste. It should have been those goobers from C Company. Not a penny between the whole bunch, yet they’re still alive.
Oh shit, Oh shit here we go! The helicopter banked to the right at an incredibly steep angle. Osborn almost lost his grip. He was caught off guard as he was looking to see if any of the pieces of the downed chopper were big enough to carry survivors.
His squad’s mission was to invest a mansion that overlooked the beaches. In theory, they were to land in the front yard and storm through the veranda up the grand staircase and then play it by ear. It was suspected that some Red officers had ceased the place, and they were to be captured or killed.
Hopefully the Reds in question were as unprepared as he felt his men were. While his “Golden Boys” could relate to the mansion and its grand staircase, it was flying bullets that worried him.
The Lieutenant happened to be very familiar with grand staircases as well. His family had three of them in various locations throughout the US. Jimmy’s father was the Assistant Secretary of War under Howard Peterson. Basically, his father, James Osborn II, bought his office by donating large amounts of money to the Democratic Party.
The Osborn family was wealthy and had been since the Civil War. It’s funny how wars seem to make certain kinds of people rich in capitalistic societies.
Now linage and wealth were irrelevant. His men were looking at him for some leadership after what just happened to the other helicopter. Unfortunately, he was pretty much paralyzed by what he had just seen. James Osborn III made a show of locking and loading his M1 carbine and put on his best game face. Then he pointed at the mansion. It seemed to do the trick. Also, he had no idea what was going on in the other chopper and had no idea if any of his men would follow him as he leaped through the door when they landed on the manicured lawn.
He almost tripped over a large recessed pool and fountain just as he caught a glimpse of something moving to his right. He raised his weapon and shot the man cold dead right in the head. Then he noticed that he had wet himself.
So much for Feet Dry, he thought and deliberately ran through the water to disguise his wetness. He stopped behind a low wall and statue peaking around the side. By god, there was another guy in uniform shooting at something. Damned if Jimmy didn’t raise his carbine and plug that guy as well. Shit maybe he was actually good at this.
He screamed something and started to run towards the open front door. He noticed that his boots were making a squishing sound as he ran.
His company overran the mansion and even defeated a counter attack by some local Polish communist militia. The rest of the brigade shut up about the “Golden Boys” after that action.
In total they lost a senator’s son, three heirs to multi-million dollar fortunes and a sitting congressman’s son along with two Yale alumni and one graduate of Harvard.
Explosive Carpet
Even its proponents realized that Carpet Bombing is a horrible way to wage war. Especially when it is used on innocent civilians who are the people you are trying to save. Tens of thousands of Frenchman were killed by bombs dropped by the USAAF and RAF during World War Two.
967 B-29s, B-17s and B-24s were once again flying in the classic formation that maximized the destruction below. This time they were bombing narrow areas of water in the Turkish straights.
Small bombs or bomblets had been designed to explode all manner of marine mines on the surface and under the water. Each bomblet had a prescribed depth at which it would explode or on contact with a mine or the bottom, which ever came first.
The theory had been tested out on an old mine field known as the Northern Barrage. The Barrage was a failed attempt to stop U-boats from passing between Iceland and the Faroes Islands and was halted in 1943 when other projects proved more useful.
Three test runs by 200 bombers dropping the new bomblets had proved their effectiveness. The mines were cleared to 90% from a depth of the surface to 300 feet. No portion of the projected invasion routes through the Turkish or Danish Straits were deeper.
Each B-29 could carry 3600 bomblets and the B-24 and B-17 over 1400 each. That meant quite a large pattern could be cleared per bomber. The challenges were twofold.
Keep the pattern tight enough to hit all the mines possible.
Fly at the right altitude that was safe enough for a big bomber yet low enough to maximize the area cleared of mines.
The optimal altitude is 1000 feet. This allows for the bomblets to be clustered enough to clear the mines yet is high enough for the big boys to fly.
This magic carpet of bombs had shown to be an effective and quick way to clear a narrow channel through a confined waterway. The key, as always, is execution. Over a million small bomblets will be raining down on a 5 mile by 1000-foot-wide area and that comes out to a lot of explosives landing in a small amount of time.
When they initially hit not much happened. A few did explode either by accident or because they struck a surface mine. The real show started when the bomblets started to hit mines floating under the surface or once they hit their prescribed depth. Fifteen percent were designed to only explode either on contact or after 5 minutes had passed.
After a few seconds the underwater explosions started to occur. Within two minutes all hell was starting to break
lose and detonating mines and bombs were going off almost continuously for miles in a rolling barrage of churning water and surface eruptions.
A few thousand of the bomblets had landed in very shallow water or the shoreline on either side of the designated path. The bombs did not disperse with one hundred percent fluidity but poured out somewhat haphazardly.
The individual bomblets were not large weighing in at 2.5 kg each. The mines they were designed to set off were large. The explosions involving the mines were indeed impressive with up to 300 kg of explosives lighting off all at once. In addition, the naval mines were not armored and no special detonators were needed by the bomblets to penetrate their outer casings.
Two unfortunate small fishing boats were enjoying the isolated fishing grounds just off Hellebaek Denmark when the first bombers appeared. They must have thought the worst was over when only one of the small bombs hit one of their boats and did not explode. One of the sailors was seen by a bomber crew holding the little bomb up and laughing at his escape from death when the explosions started to erupt from deep down beneath. Both little boats were obliterated by the same 220 kg mine moored at a depth of 15 meters. They had probably thought themselves immune from the mines due to their small size and wood hulls.
The bombers followed the helicopters and proceeded Taskforce 124. A million small bomblets easily cleared the way through the hastily sewn mine field that had been reported just a week ago by the Danish Partisans. 200 mines exploded within 20 minutes from direct hits or secondary explosions. A few escaped or slipped their moorings and were on the surface and these were taken care of by the lead group of minesweepers in short order.
An explosive carpet had been laid down by the bombers of the 8th Air Force. A carpet that had swept away a hidden menace.
Task Force 124 passed through the still churning waters and the last barrier before Copenhagen followed by the remainder of the NATO Baltic Fleet and Assault Task Force 124.3 through .7. Nothing stood in their way and it was clear sailing ahead for the troops transports loaded with a force of 25 divisions.
And Died
Major Stanislav Honchar of the NKVD was sitting on the stairs that led up to Sergo’s office. He was looking through the doorway at the now empty office. At the far corner of the room was a trapdoor. He knew that when the escape hatch was opened there was about a five foot drop down into a large crawl space.
His colleagues were comfortable with interpreting the scene before him as a straight forward getaway scheme. Yet to the Major, the whole setup just seemed too easy. How had both Sergo and Georgi evaded his repeated personal searches and simply escaped using such an opening when no one was looking.
His men had combed the entire factory complex at least a dozen times. Finally the search had to be called off and the slave laborers allowed back in. The factory complex was simply too valuable and productive to the war effort to be closed any longer. Even Stalin was unwilling to give such an order.
Where were they hiding and how did their location escape his trained eye? Dogs had been used and came up with nothing except an initial trail leading away from their offices and the complex. The trail picked up across the street and continued onto the barracks. The Major had tortured every man who was in the barracks just for good measure. A number the men had finally admitted seeing two strangers moving through the barracks during the guard’s shift change.
Next he tortured all the guards on the shift. In the end, two guards had made false confessions. Stanislav hated torture because he knew it didn’t work. People just said what they think you wanted them to say to stop the pain.
Brutalization was the lazy man’s way of taking revenge and working out his personal demons. Torture never led to the truth but it was expected, so he had done it.
The trap doors and scent trails to the street were intended to convince people that the two men had somehow evaded capture. The ruse had worked on everyone but the Major.
Conventional wisdom suggested that Sergo and Georgi had hidden themselves somewhere in their offices. Now it seems that after the search ended they had been able to sneak out past two squads of guards. Any reasonable person would accept these explanations once all the other possibilities were eliminated.
Stanislav was totally unable to believe the current scenarios. He was anything but reasonable and conventional at times like this and that is why he was so good at his job.
He had once caught two prisoners who supposedly escaped a gulag 1400 km from the nearest food or water in the middle of Siberia. Major Honchar was called in after a week and solved the case in less than 6 hours. His intuition told him they were still in the compound. He found their bodies in the latrine. They had weigh themselves down and were breathing through tubes that looked like feces. The unaccounted-for methane gas had killed them within a short time.
The level of shit never varied due to a system of spillways. He had noticed the two almost perfect turds while staring at the cesspool. The two turds in question didn’t seem to move amongst the newly laid ones that were added by the thousands every day. The prisoner’s breathing tubes were attached to these turds.
In this current situation regarding Sergo and Georgi’s disappearance, it seemed to Honchar that the safes were the most logical place to hide an exit. He was fixated on the fact that the safes were built into the very structure of the factory complex.
He tried to order the excavation of the area. However, the engineers told them that digging more than a few meters deep would require closing the factory for months. Again no one would agree to disrupting the factory’s operations.
Honchar was pouring over the facility’s construction records last night when he noticed something strange. No worker or team of workers, who worked on the projects were still prisoners. Another unusual detail was no one worked on the offices for more than a few days. All had then been transferred and released or both.
Tomorrow he was going to track down all of the former slave workers. He had a hunch that every single one who worked on both offices had disappeared or were dead. He decided to have one last look at Sergo’s office before morning and that is what brought him here sitting on the stairs.
He had brought an archeologist’s brush and a small air bulb. He began to dust off and blow air around the area where the safe was installed. The wall was now hacked and gouged men trying to hammer their way through a solid rock.
He was about to give up when he saw it. Just a hint of a line on the wall where there shouldn’t be a line. It ran diagonally and that was why no one noticed it before. He made a mental note to look up who had been the stone mason. The seam was barely visible only if you brushed away the dust in the right direction. He reached out and touched the seam with his fingers.
Suddenly the Major felt a deep pin prick on his ring finger and thumb. He pulled his hand away and sucked on the spots by placing them in his mouth. Almost immediately he felt light headed. He tried to get up from his crouch and fell backwards hitting his head. He crawled and rolled over to the door tumbling down the stairs and died.
Figure 33 - Bulb and Brush
Sergo Waits
Sergo heard the needles fire and retract. He had known this day would come. Which is why he designed this last failsafe. He had no way of knowing whether it had worked or not. All he knew was that something or someone found the last seam that would lead to his hiding place. The bedrock was firmly in place but whoever found that seam would know that something was behind it. Therefore, they had to die.
The needles were coated with snake venom of the Inland Taipan. Each was in a small vial of the venom and shot through the rubber top to a length of 4 inches and retracted in a matter of less than a second. One strike of this venom covered dart should be enough to kill any person. There were 20 of them in the final seam. The needles could fire 10 times. His mind raced as he tried to think of how someone had gotten this far. Luck he supposed. Wasn’t that always the way. Luck had been his companion for the last couple of years, but maybe i
t was time she left. He was ready for what, if anything, came next.
He had the proverbial hollow tooth implanted with a poison that would save him from Beria’s torture. He suddenly remembered that Beria had disappeared. He was sure someone else would take his place in any event.
All he could do was wait. His tongue roamed around his mouth and felt his fake tooth for the 100th time that day. He was not going to be taken alive.
After a couple of hours, he relaxed. He guessed his little trap had worked and some poor investigator was dead. Better him than me, he thought. He wondered how many others would die before they finally broke through.
He kept himself busy trying to organize the copies of documents he had been hastily collecting and storing in his hiding place. These papers, films and recordings were the best way for him to protect his legacy and to see that the true story of World War Three survived.
So he sorted, filed and waited.
Backdoor Man
Mario Fiat couldn’t believe he was back in Turkey and once again looking at the Turkish Straits. He thought he was done with field work after his last assignment. He had been looking forward to tracking down Betty Grupe and seeing if he could make her his wife. Instead for the third time he was impersonating an itinerate Kurdish worker.
Talk about rockets’ red glare. Jesus, when one of the American battle ships fired off a salvo into Koybasi Battery, it was something to behold. He counted nine massive explosions with columns of debris being thrown a hundred feet high. He supposed some of those fragments and pieces contained Mikhail Orloff.
Mario had gotten to know the group of Red soldiers who manned the 100-mm battery in the old fort. His motives were sinister but the end result was something akin to a friendship. Mikhail and the others in the gun crew were not monsters at all. They were ordinary men caught up in extraordinary circumstances.
World War Three 1946 Series Boxed Set: Stalin Strikes First Page 124